02/19/2008    |    Devlog    |    Xenobia    |    Discuss

Well, I do not even really know how to begin this. I never thought I would write a Devlog about my job because, well, I seem to be the only crazy fool who actually thinks it is fun! At least that is what people around the office are thinking. Have you ever been walking down the street and thought to yourself “wouldn’t it be cool if there were these two guys dressed like pirates sword fighting on top of a bus?” Well, that is pretty much what I get to imagine and bring to life in POTBS!

In short, I am a Technical Artist, what that actually means can vary a lot between companies. Within FLS that pretty much means that I am the go-between for different departments, and where things get sent that no one else wants to do! Ha ha! I work closely with the Animation, Environment, and Concept departments. I think the best way to illustrate the inner workings of my job, calls for an example! yay

Let us start with Tortuga. The Concept people wrote up a storyline based on the history of the area (with some creative liberties, of course), set up a “feel” for the place, and a general description of how it should look. It was then broken into two parts: The Environment team begins modeling the town, and the Animation guys make any requested animations needed for the town. I get to wait! While I wait for my turn I read the storyline to start me thinking in the correct mood for the town. For Tortuga it was dark, rough, and drunken. That was not hard to imagine for a pirate town! Apart from reading the description, I also go through the available animations and start picking out which ones will work for the town.

Once the Environment team has a roughed out version of the NavMesh ready for me, they send it my way so that I can go into Maya and start adding the needed locators into the file that I will later need. This is the part that is a little hard to describe. As I am scrolling through the Maya file looking at the town I can “picture” scenes taking place in various nooks and crannies. So, I see an alley with a stack of crates and think “that would be a great place to have a guy sitting on a crate drinking grog with his buddy passed out on the ground leaning against the wall.” As I see these scenes I add the appropriate locators. The two images below help show what I am seeing/doing. The first one is a top view of Tortuga’s “Oldtown” district, the blue area is the town geometry and the green is the NavMesh. The second image is of the same area after I have added all of the Lively placers. This is also the time where I set up exits. These are the doorways that glow that players can click and be instanced into a room. And no, I am not responsible for the color that they glow. I just make sure that all the appropriate door parts glow and sparkle and are clickable.

Once that process is completed, and for Tortuga this took AGES because it was so huge, I export the Maya file. Then I begin to add the NPC’s in the editor. This involves choosing what sex they are, what they will be wearing, what action they do, and where they will be. I spend quite a bit of time walking through the town in-game and in Maya tweaking locator positions as I “see” more scenarios in my head. Once all the excitement of making the new Lively Town is over, it is back to testing, tweaking, and fixing.

These images show what the scene looks like in Maya, and what it looks like in-game with the editing tools turned on. As you can see, the green arrows are the same as the locators in Maya. These are my guides to bringing the towns to life!

It is a difficult job to make sound amazing, but I love it and the creative freedoms that is gives me. Now that I have totally awed and inspired you all to be technical artists, I hope you enjoy the “life” in POTBS!

02/19/2008    |    Devlog    |    Xenobia    |    Discuss